Part 7 (1/2)

The mob, driven from the steps, was trying to re-form and renew the attack. From up the street, the machine-guns, silent during the bayonet-fight, began hammering again. The mob surged forward to get out of their fire, and were met by a rifle-blast and a hedge of bayonets at the steps; they surged back, and the machine-guns flailed them again. They started to rush the building from whence the automatic-fire came, and there was a fusilade and a shriek of ”_Znidd geek!_” from up the street. They turned and fled in the direction from whence they had come, bullets scourging them from three directions at once.

For a moment, von Schlichten and the three Terrans and eighty-odd Kragans who had survived the fight stood on the steps, weapons poised, seeking more enemies. The machine-guns up the street stuttered a few short bursts and were silent. From behind, the beleaguered Terrans and their Kragan guards were emerging. He saw Jules Keaveney and his wife; Commander Prinsloo of the _Aldebaran_; Harry Quong and Bogdanoff. Ah, there she was! He heaved a breath of relief and waved to her.

The Kragans were already setting about their after-battle ch.o.r.es. A couple of hundred more Kragans, led by Native-Major Kormork, the co-parent of young with King Kankad, came up at the double and stopped in front of Company House.

”We were in quarters, aboard the _Aldebaran_ and in the guest-house at the airport,” Kormork reported. ”We were attacked, fifteen minutes ago, by a mob. We took ten minutes beating them off, and five more getting here. I sent Native-Captain Zeerjeek and the rest of the force to re-take the supply-depot and the shops and lorry hangars, which had been taken, and relieve the military airport, which is under attack.”

”Good enough. I hope you didn't spread yourself out too thin. What's the situation at the commercial airport?”

”The two s.h.i.+ps, the _Aldebaran_ and the freighter _Northern Star_, are both safe,” Kormork replied. ”I saw them go on contragravity and rise to about a hundred feet.”

”Whose crowd is that you have?” he asked the Terran lieutenant who had taken over command of the first force of Kragans.

”Company 6, Eighteenth Rifles, sir. We were on duty at the guardhouse; fighting broke out in the direction of the native barracks. A couple of runners from Captain Retief of Company 4 came in with word that he was being attacked by mutineers from the Tenth N.U.N.I., but that he was holding them back. So Captain Charbonneau, who was killed a few minutes ago, left a Terran lieutenant and a Kragan native-lieutenant and a couple of native-sergeants and thirty Kragans to hold the guardhouse, and brought the rest of us here.”

Von Schlichten nodded. ”You'd pa.s.s the military airport and the power-plant, wouldn't you?” he asked.

”Yes, sir. The military airport's holding out, and I saw the red-and-yellow danger-lights on the fence around the power-plant.”

That meant the power-plant was, for the time, safe; somebody'd turned twenty thousand volts into the fence.

”All right. I'm setting up my command post at the telecast station, where the communication equipment is.” He turned to the crowd that had come out onto the porch from inside. ”Where's Colonel Cheng-Li?”

”Here, general.” The Intelligence and Constabulary officer pushed through the crowd. ”I was on the phone, talking to the military airport, the commercial airport, ordnance depot, s.p.a.ceport, s.h.i.+p-docks and power plant. All answer. I'm afraid Pop Goode, at the city power-plant, is done for; n.o.body answers there, but the TV-pickup is still on in the load-dispatcher's room, and the place is full of geeks. Colonel Jarman's coming here with a lorry to get combat-car crews; he's short-handed. Port-Captain Leavitt has all the native labor at the airport and s.p.a.ceport herded into a repair dock; he's keeping them covered with the forward 90-mm. gun of the _Northern Star_. Lorry-hangars, repair-shops and maintenance-yards don't answer.”

”That's what I was going to ask you. Good enough. Harry Quong, Ha.s.san Bogdanoff!”

His command-car crew front-and-centered.

”I want you to take Colonel O'Leary up, as soon as my car's brought here.... Hid, you go up and see what's going on. Drop flares where there isn't any light. And take a look at the native-labor camp and the equipment-park, south of the reservation.... Kormork, you take all your gang, and half these soldiers from the Eighteenth, here, and help clear the native-troops barracks. And don't bother taking any prisoners; we can't spare personnel to guard them.”

Kormork grinned. The taking of prisoners had always been one of those irrational Terran customs which no Ullran regarded with favor, or even comprehension.

VI

There was fresh intelligence from Konkrook, by the time he returned to the telecast station. Mutiny had broken out there among the laborers and native troops, who outnumbered the Terrans and their Kragan mercenaries on Gongonk Island by five thousand to five hundred and fifteen hundred respectively. The attempt to relieve Jaikark's palace had been called off before the relief-force could be sent; there was heavy and confused fighting all over the island, and most of the combat contragravity and about half the Kragan Rifles had had to be committed to defend the Company farms across the Channel, on the mainland, south of the city. There had also been an urgent call for help from Colonel Rodolfo MacKinnon, in command of Company troops at the Keegark Residency.

He called Keegark; a girl, apparently one of the civilian telecast technicians, answered.

”We must have help, General von Schlichten,” she told him. ”The native troops, all but two hundred Kragans, have mutinied. They have everything here except Company House--docks, airport, everything.

We're trying to hold out, but there are thousands of them.”

”What happened to Eric Blount and your Resident-Agent, Mr. Lemoyne?”

”We don't know. They were at the Palace, talking to King Orgzild.